| Higginson and Bigelow, comps. American Sonnets. 1891. | | | | To a Face at a Concert | | By Edward Rowland Sill (1841–1887) |
| | | WHEN the low music makes a dusk of sound | |
| About us, and the viol or far-off horn | |
| Swells out above it like a wind forlorn, | |
| That wanders seeking something never found, | |
| What phantom in your brain, on what dim ground, | 5 |
| Traces its shadowy lines? What vision, born | |
| Of unfulfillment, fades in mere self-scorn, | |
| Or grows, from that still twilight stealing round, | |
| When the lids droop and the hands lie unstrung? | |
| Dare one divine your dream, while the chords weave | 10 |
| Their cloudy woof from key to key, and die,— | |
| Is it one fate that, since the world was young, | |
| Has followed man, and makes him half believe | |
| The voice of instruments a human cry? | | | | |
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